Timeless Wisdom - American Exceptionalism: Myth or Reality?

Welcome to Timeless Wisdom with Dennis Prager. Hear thousands of hours of Dennis' lectures, courses, and classic radio programs. And to purchase Dennis Prager's Rational Bibles, go to DennisPrager.com. Thank you very, very much. It's a particular honor to have a colleague and a peer say such kind things about you. I have tremendous admiration for your group. Whenever I hear Americanism in any event, I know that people understand that America is not a geographic entity. With no insult intended to any other country, I'm a world traveler, I love the world, I've been to 93 countries. I'm going in a week to Zambia and Botswana and Zimbabwe to give mosquito nets out to to orphan kids there. I have a deep commitment to a sense of the world. But this country is unique. Americanism exists. Belgiumism doesn't. Germanism doesn't. Zimbabweism doesn't. This is unique. It's an idea. It's, in my opinion, the greatest value system ever devised. My next book makes that case and its applicability in every society. So you touch the deepest core of my beliefs. I've been asked to speak on American exceptionalism. Is it a myth or reality? And it is indeed a reality to those who believe it. If you deny it, then clearly it doesn't exist. It's God exists for those of us who believe in God. For those who don't believe in God, whether God exists or not is irrelevant to them. We are exceptional. There is an American exceptionalism. But if you truly deny it, then it can be undone. That's what Jerry pointed out. We are in danger of losing the soul of this country, and it revolves around the question of, is this country exceptional? Yes, it is. It was designed to be exceptional. To remove exceptionalism from America is to remove the batteries from a battery-operated machine. It can no longer work. That is the battery of the United States of America. It's exceptionalism. You are honoring Abraham Lincoln tonight. He said in his Second Annual Address to Congress those famous words, "We shall nobly save or meanly lose the last best hope of earth." I don't believe— and again, it is no knock at all on any other country. Every country has beautiful people in it. That's a given. And they all have ugly people in it. That's also a given. But I fully appreciate the former fact. Nevertheless, nobody else says, to the best of my knowledge, Sweden is the last best hope of Earth, Uruguay is the last best hope of Earth, Tibet is the last best hope of Earth. People don't say that in different countries, and they're not expected to. And if a prime minister of Sweden got up and said that, Swedes would look at him as if he needed psychiatric counseling. It would not make sense any more than if he said at the end, God bless Sweden, at the end of an address. This is a unique society. We are losing our understanding of how unique it is. So I want to make the case tonight about and for American exceptionalism, that it has always existed. It existed before we were founded. The famous address of John Winthrop to the Puritan colonists of Massachusetts Bay. For we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us. Yes, the eyes of all people are upon us. Again, no other country said this. There was one other group that said this, the Jews. And indeed, the founders of America said this is the second chosen people. This was a country founded on the belief that it was emulating the chosenness of the Hebrews to be a second chosen people. No other country ever had this belief. You can dismiss it, of course, as arrogance, as foolishness, as chauvinistic, and indeed there are many, many people, those who teach your children at college, unless it's Pepperdine, Charles Reynolds, Reynolds, but at most colleges your child will be taught, as I was taught at Columbia University, that that's nonsense. This is chauvinist, nationalist nonsense, American exceptionalism. But it's not nonsense. It is the greatest belief that has animated a country in the history of countries. We have it in every sphere. I'll begin with foreign policy. Let me read to you from John F. Kennedy's inaugural address: In the long history of the world, only a few generations have been granted the role of defending freedom in its hour of maximum danger. I do not shrink from this responsibility. I welcome it. I do not believe that any of us would exchange places with any other people or any other generation. The energy, the faith, the devotion which we bring to this endeavor will light our country and all who serve it, and the glow from that fire can truly light the world. There is no other inaugural address of another country's president or prime minister that says our duty is to bring liberty to the world. Indeed, by the way, I'd like you to do an interesting experiment. I'd like you to give this part of the Kennedy inaugural address from 1961, I'd like you to give it to any college senior, junior that you know, and say, "This was given by an American president. Was this president Republican or Democrat?" And I will bet you that 90% will say it was given by a Republican. That is how dramatically the Democratic Party has changed in my lifetime. I am not here to politicize this event, but that is as descriptive a reality as one can address. The notion that we Americans are here to spread liberty on Earth shifted parties. It became a conservative and Republican idea. It was always a conservative idea, though not all conservatives held it. But this notion that we have a moral obligation to the rest of humanity, that we were blessed by God or by nature or by luck or by the founders, and we have to share this with others and spread it to others— no other group has had it. Now, how is this dismissed? It's— this is incontrovertible. So how do those who dismiss this react? They say, well, our fighting abroad was not for liberty, it was for resources, for economic imperialism. So I then asked them, as an example, those who say this— and I've had guests on my show like Howard Zinn, the famous, or if you will, infamous author of A People's History of the United States, which is what I call a proctologist's history of America— and I asked him, I said, how do you explain the Korean War? I always ask about the Korean War, because folks, with all respect to Korea, they don't have anything. In terms of natural resources, unless you feel that one should fight a fight for kimchi, which is garlic cabbage, a unique dish that I still taste 30 years after visiting Seoul, unless you believe that that's why we went into Korea, why did we go? Why did we lose? What is it, 30,000 troops or so? Why did we go into Korea? What did we have to gain? Rubber? Oil? What? What? Most Americans who fought there could not identify the country on a map. They only knew one thing: these people are fighting for liberty against the monstrous Mao Zedong-inspired North Korean Communist Party. We will die if we have to, to bring liberty to that godforsaken place. That's why there was a Korean War. That's why this country fought. That is why this country fought in Vietnam. What was the economic benefit of having South Vietnam as a place of liberty? It's very angering to me when American idealism and all the death and maiming that took place for this idealism is dismissed as Iraq for oil. We could have gotten the oil like the Russians got the oil and the Chinese got the oil and the Germans got the oil from Saddam Hussein. We didn't have to invade, and we've invaded and gotten no oil from them anyway. This materialist deconstruction of American idealism to render all of those deaths of, of mostly American boys meaningless, indeed an imperialist venture is truly reprehensible. It's morally reprehensible. It's made by people, I am convinced, who cannot imagine dying for others. I am convinced that that is the reason they cannot imagine that America died for others, because they would find it so, so incomprehensible for them or their children to do it. So they can't imagine that America has been as good as it has been. Has America been flawed? How could America not be flawed? It's composed of humans, and humans are flawed. But in the sum total of goodness that has been brought to the planet Earth, there is no country that holds a candle to the United States. It's not— this is not— It's demonstrably provable. I'm telling you, I am almost rendered speechless at those who deny it. I mean, you can differ on so many things, but the role of America in spreading liberty on Earth—

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Uh, is, is incontrovertible. Uh, let me take one of the leading liberal writers of our time, Thomas Friedman, New York Times Foreign Policy columnist. When Barack Obama got the Nobel Peace Prize, which given my view of the prize I feel he did deserve, and given that he got it, what in fact Tom Friedman, to his great credit, wrote was: Here is what Barack Obama should say in Stockholm when he receives the prize. The truth is, ladies and gentlemen, it is not I who deserves the prize, but the greatest peacemakers on earth, and they are the members of the United States military. That was written by a prominent liberal writer. The entire column was what the speech that Barack Obama should give. I don't deserve it. The U.S. military is the greatest peacekeeper on earth. My friends, the thought of— let us say, and I say this to callers to my show when they dispute this with me— say if a meteor came and just destroyed the United States, left every other country intact, do you think the world would be a better place or a worse place? I mean, maybe that's the clarifying moment that the world needs. Would you really like the, the world to be dominated by China, Russia, Iran, Venezuela, the United Nations? Is that whom you would like to dominate? We do dominate, thank God. Thank God a thousand times. But there is a massive movement to undo American dominance in the world, and that is because those people don't believe in exceptionalism. Our president had a very interesting answer when asked about American exceptionalism. In April of this past year, 2009, President Barack Obama responded to a journalist question in Strasbourg with the statement— he was asked about whether he believes in American exceptionalism. This was his response: "I believe in American exceptionalism just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism." The thing is, they don't believe in that. That's the point. And if everybody believes in their own exceptionalism, then there is no exceptionalism. It's like if everybody's special, nobody's special. I mean, with all respect to the fact that this is the new idea in raising children now, everybody is terrific no matter what. I know my son, when he was on a baseball team, which in Prager tradition never won, And he was still given a trophy. And I remember his whole team were given trophies even though they lost every game. And I just wondered, I remember saying, David, why did you get this? And he had no answer. He said, for playing. And there were kids, well, that's more than some of the kids. Some of the kids got it for breathing. I mean, there were kids who didn't play and they got a trophy. So if everybody gets a trophy, trophies don't mean anything. If everybody's exceptional, nobody's exceptional. The word has a definition. Other countries don't believe they have a role to shape the world and spread liberty and individualism and good values and free markets and free everything. We do. Some of us do. Some of us do. Increasingly, fewer and fewer. Few do. This is the great challenge, to keep alive American exceptionalism, or indeed those who died did die in vain. That you can't have it both ways. Either we die for a cause. Every American soldier doesn't only die for America, they die for their country and for liberty around the world, and it should always be stated, and it usually is, This soldier died for, for his country and for liberty. For his country and for liberty. Look it up. It's a very common way of describing the death of an American soldier, because that is absolutely accurate. Tell me where American soldiers have died in any number where it was not a matter of the liberty of that place. World War I, World War II, Korean War, wherever there were Cold War proxy battles. The Vietnam War, the war in Iraq. I don't care whether you believe it was a good idea or not. Good idea or not, the Iraqi people have liberty for the first time in their history now. That is a fact. And that is only because of the United States of America and the handful of others who joined us. You can oppose the war. Honorable people could have said we shouldn't have gone there. That's fine. My issue was not to defend the war. It is to defend the morality of what America did. If you feel we shouldn't have done it because bringing liberty to the Arab world is too great a task at this time, because it is not a place with fertile soil for it, fair enough, fair enough. There are all sorts of arguments one can give. But the fact remains that Iraq has elections, that it is possible to express one's opinion and not be murdered, and tortured to death in Iraq solely because of Americans. The fact is that girls do not have lye thrown in their face for attending school in Afghanistan because of American troops and the handful of others who have joined us in Afghanistan. If the United States leaves Afghanistan— and I don't mind if you want us to leave, I mind if you lie to yourself about the consequences. I always tell my listeners, and I am known for being particularly decent to people who differ with me, but I— this is the thing after 27 years of radio, I don't mind being lied to. I don't like it, but I don't mind it. I am very frightened when people lie to themselves. It's okay to me if you say you want American troops to leave Afghanistan. I differ with you profoundly. But I have no respect for you, the individual who says it, if you deny the bloodletting and the particular torture and rape of women that will ensue if the United States leaves Afghanistan. Then you have lied to yourself because you cannot confront the consequences of what you advocate. And that is not moral. That is not decent. This is an exceptional conflict. Country willing to die in Afghanistan for those people, willing to die in Iraq for Iraqis, or in Vietnam for Vietnamese, or in, uh, or, or in Korea for Koreans. That's just foreign policy. I could spend the evening just on foreign policy, but there is a limit.

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Time, so let me go to other areas of where America is indeed exceptional. We are exceptional in our values. The United States is built upon what I call the American Trinity. There is an American Trinity just as there is a Christian Trinity. But most Americans don't know it. Most Christians, indeed all Christians, know of their Trinity. Very few Americans do. I didn't. Lo and behold, when I was asked so often, "What are America's distinctive values?" I'd go into a whole speech. I don't need a speech. The Christian doesn't need a speech to say what the Christian Trinity is. The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, or Holy Ghost. End of issue. You can explain that forever, but that's— but Americans don't know in a nutshell what is our Trinity. And then I realized, my God, it's been in my pocket my whole life. It's on every coin. E pluribus unum, liberty, and God we trust. That's the American Trinity. No other country in the history of the world has ever had those three values as its central values. None. Some have had God, some have had liberty, and none that I know of have had e pluribus unum. But those three are utterly unique to this country. In that way, too, we are exceptional, and these are exceptional values. For example, e pluribus unum, from many one. No other nation can say that. You don't become a German or a, or a Swede or a Japanese when you become a citizen of that country. You become a citizen, but you don't become Japanese. You never become Japanese. You rarely become German. A third-generation Turk who doesn't speak Turkish and who is fluent in German is still not regarded as a German. I'm not blaming Germans for this, it's just we're unique. Whereas 10 days, a day, a minute after arriving here, if someone says he's American and can barely speak English, we regard him or her as an American. That's unique. To the United States. We don't give a damn where you come from. We don't give a hoot if you have an accent. It doesn't mean— if you don't have an accent, you're almost un-American. In fact, I'm stunned at when I— if I ever go to what, to a, a fast food place and the person doesn't have an accent, I— where are you from? Colorado. Wow, it's amazing. How did you get here? No, this is remarkable place. Dinesh D'Souza makes the very intelligent point in his, in his fine book, What's So Great About America? And he was born in India and he feels 100% American. He says nobody could become an Indian. Think of an American moved to India and did in fact get Indian, uh, Indian citizenship. And folks, I'm a big Indian fan. I've been there 4 times. I've taken 100 people on a cruise to India. I, I love India. But this is not anti-India, it's just a fact. You don't become an Indian because you become a citizen, but you become an American, full 100% American. I am often asked, do I feel, uh, because I am a committed Jew, as you heard from the books I've written on Judaism, I'm very involved my whole life in Jewish life and written 2 books and about 400 articles on Judaism. I teach the Torah verse by verse from Hebrew at the University of Judaism. I have 20 years. And I've been asked, well, do you feel first American or first Jewish? And I have a terrific answer, which is my answer no matter who asks me. If you woke me up at 3 AM, I would give you this answer because it's the truth. I have two fathers, Abraham and George Washington. And that's the truth, Ruth. That is exactly what I feel, both emotionally and intellectually. That is what I feel. George Washington is my father, even though my grandfather father was a Jew in Poland. George Washington is my father. George Washington is the father of the country of, of the Azerbaijani who moves here and becomes an American citizen. There is no place like that. You think if you become a German, the Kaiser or whomever won, or, you know, or Schiller or Beethoven, that's my, my group. You don't feel that way. So he makes the intelligent point. He said, That is why, because American is an idea, you can say something is un-American. He said there's no such thing as un-German or un-French or un-Swedish, but there is such a thing as un-American. It's an idea, and we are losing it. We are losing it in the way it is taught by people who so react against this. E pluribus unum taught another radically new thing. You heard tonight in this brilliantly delivered address by Lincoln about how we are— that this is a new nation, that we have created a new nation. We have. And you know why? One of the reasons is from E Pluribus Unum, because this nation said blood doesn't matter. The first time in the history of the world that that was ever said to every every nation, blood was everything. Family, blood, that was above all. Tribe, family, blood. Not in America. Not in America. I interviewed a professor at Harvard who was in USAID in Latin America his whole life, Lawrence Harrison, wrote a great book, Who Prospered. It's a very simple question: why did North America prosper and South America didn't? Tremendous materials, new world. How come? Said, I'll give you the biggest reason. It's called familism. In Latin American culture, they discriminated on the basis of family. If you weren't blood, they didn't trust you. In the United States, they couldn't care less if you were blood or not. Could you do the job? You're hired. It's so, it's so taken for granted, American values, that we're losing them because we take them for granted. They're not our articulated. They need to be articulated, or we will forget them. This in and of itself— you think other societies, just as an example, would have adoption of, of children from other races and ethnicities and nations like we do, and nobody bats an eyelash? Or even adoption, period? Adoption was always a big thing in America. I speak as an adoptive parent, and, and the one of the reasons is nobody cares. Not your blood, Whoopie-doo, who cares? You love your child not because it's your blood, but because you love him or her. That's American, and it's been generally unique to America. All from e pluribus unum, from many one. We don't care about your blood. Was there racism in American history? You bet. But there was racism everywhere on Earth. What is unique to America is not that there were bad people who believed in racism. It is that America abolished slavery and racism. Abolished to the extent that it's abolished. Obviously there are remnants of racism, but this is the least racist country on the face of the earth, and I will die saying that. And it— do you know, by the way, we talk, and correctly, we have a terrible stain with regard to racism towards blacks, but do you know that more African, black Africans have moved to the United States by voluntarily than did through slavery. This is a barely, rarely noted statistic. It happened about 15 years ago. William Safire, the late William Safire of the New York Times, noted it. And to the credit of the New York Times, it had it on its first front page the day some gentleman from, I think, West Africa became the— crossed the number when greater numbers of Africans came came because they were shipped in the hellhole of those slave ships. People want to live here because they know that they will be treated decently, no matter what their color, no matter what their background, no matter what their religion. This is E Pluribus Unum, second part of the American Trinity, liberty. The French had liberty, right? Liberty, fraternity, equality. Equality, French Revolution. Ah, but there's a big difference. The French didn't think it through. They said liberty and equality. We didn't. Equality is not in the American Trinity. It is not on any of the coins. Because while of course we believe that everyone is created equal, that is in our Declaration of Independence, of course we believe that. That's absolutely true. But we don't believe in equality as a result as an ideal. The French do. Europe does. That is why becoming like Europe means abandoning Americanism. That, that, that is why Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson wanted the American seal to depict the Jews leaving Egypt. Just as the Jews left Egypt, we Americans left Europe. Half of America, or at least one of its parties, wants us to return to Europe. That is the end of Americanism as we know it, to return to Europe and its values. We do not believe in equality as a result, as a value. Inequality from birth, yes, but of result, no. This country believes in a freedom that no one talks about anymore. It's called the freedom to fail. If there is no freedom to fail, then there isn't real freedom. That is one of the best things you or your children could ever have, is a failure. If you can't fail, if the state will take care of you at all times and make it impossible for you to fail, you will never grow up. You will remain a child. This is a civilization, America, American civilization of grown-ups. Not anymore. It's profoundly childish, unfortunately, because it has abandoned the ability to fail. Failure is not permitted. That's why my son got trophies for losing. I was opposed to my son getting—

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Trophies for losing— losers don't get trophies, they get a handshake. And that is the way it has always been in America, but in the therapeutic culture that we live, keeping people childlike, that is no longer the case. And so you're not allowed to lose. Massachusetts banned even keeping score in soccer games for little kids lest they feel bad if they lose. I could tell you, as a male, I would feel much worse if I couldn't lose than I would than I would if I lost. The idea that the score was rigged, how emasculating that is. I'm just speaking as a male, because males do like competition. We prefer the ability to lose. But a feminized society where we feel pity on our child who loses is a different society than the one of American individualism, which is part of our exceptionalism that I will come to. The third part of the trinity is "In God We Trust." We have a system that entirely is based on the belief that there is a God to whom we are morally accountable. Otherwise, liberty does not work. Liberty does— here, I'll tell you a rule. I studied totalitarianism. My graduate work was at the Russian Institute at Columbia University, and I I really know totalitarianism well. It's a rather arcane, almost bizarre major, but I'm thrilled I majored in it because the totalitarian temptation runs deep in human beings. And I can tell you this: if you either have a people who believe in an accountability to God, or they will be accountability to the state. As secularism increases, the state increases. That is a major reason why Europe, Europe have such large states, why they are nanny states, why they are so enormous. And same in America. As you get more secular— there are always exceptions— you get a greater belief in government, because the religious believe that people People can be good if they are accountable to God, but if there's no God to be morally accountable to, you better be accountable to the state. So the state takes over where religion has abandoned. So Europe has big states because it's the most secular place in the world. And this is what is exactly the recipe for America. You remove God as the accountable-to party and you make make the government in lieu of God. God is central to the American experiment. It cannot work without God. I'm sorry, there are beautiful atheists, there are despicable believers, that's a fact. That's not my point. The point is a society will not function, not individuals. There are great atheists, but it's of no interest to me. There were great people who believed that the world resided on the back of a turtle, but you can't build a good society on the belief that the world rests on a turtle. We are living in cut flower ethics. The ethics of America and the West were rooted in Judeo-Christian scripture and values. When you remove the Judeo-Christian soil, when you take those flowers out of that soil, they will wither and die. They look like they can live, but they will die. And they do. This is a major danger in our society. That's why "In God We Trust" is the only thing inscribed in that great hall where the President of the United States gives the address to Congress. I was there when President Obama Obama gave his address on healthcare a couple of months ago, and I did not know this because I had never been in that chamber where the joint sessions of Congress take place. There is only one thing chiseled in the gorgeous marble of that chamber on that side of the chamber where the president stands. Over the head of the president and the vice president and the Speaker of the House is chiseled in gigantic letters, "In God we trust." in God we trust. That is fundamental to the United States of America. You can be an atheist and acknowledge that. I don't demand that people believe in God, but I do demand that Americans understand that the American experiment is impossible if God is removed. It is God, liberty, and e pluribus unum. That's exceptional. Individualism is exceptional. The belief that we are responsible for ourselves. The greatest rabbi of the Talmud, Hillel, put it very simply: Im ein ani li mi li. If I am not for myself, who will be for me? Vimanilatzmi ma ani. But if I am only for myself, what am I? That is considered the basic principle of leading a good life. You must first take care of yourself, and then you must take care of others. The notion that the state will take care of me is indeed un-American. It is a bad idea. It doesn't raise good people. That's why Americans give more charity and volunteer more time than Europeans, per capita and per income, because we were raised on the belief that we take care of ourselves and our fellow human being, our parents, our children, our neighbors. But if the state takes care of them, you know what you then worry about? What Europeans worry about. How much time vacation will I have this year? That's the great issue in much of European life, because everything is taken care of, including me. Individualism is a totally noble idea. It is not selfishness, it is altruism to take care of yourself and not have others take care of you. This was a great, great innovation too for our exceptionalism. And finally, yes, we believe in our exceptionalism that we have better values than international bodies. We think that the U.S. will do more good than the U.N., than the European Union, than the World Court, or than Amnesty International. If you think the United Nations is a greater repository of moral advocacy and doing good, then fine, then you don't believe in American exceptionalism. You believe that a Human Rights Council headed by Sudan is a good idea. You believe that a Human Rights Council that has Saudi Arabia on it is a fine, fine idea and will somehow advance human rights on this planet. The United— the U.S. is a far greater institution for moral advance of humanity than the U.N. And that is a belief in American exceptionalism. Not because we are inherently better. There are twits in America and there are beautiful people everywhere on earth. The statement isn't that there is some— first of all, there couldn't be a racial component because there's no American race. So the very notion that Americans may know better cannot possibly be racial or ethnic chauvinism because there is no American race and there is no American ethnicity. It's the fact that we have been guided by a better idea. Have been. But there's no guarantee, none whatsoever, that the next generation will be guided by this idea. And that is why we have to teach it. And when it is taught, we will make a better world. And if it is forgotten, the world will descend into a cruelty unlike any ever seen before. Because the barrier between more genocide, more evil, and what we have now is the United States of America and its belief in its exceptionalism. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you again. Okay, thank you. Just like you to know, by the way, if you, uh, I, I record all my talks, and, uh, if it wasn't— if, if this group has not recorded this, I have it and will make it available through my website. Secondly, which is DennisPrager.com. This has been Timeless Wisdom with with Dennis Prager. Visit DennisPrager.com for thousands of hours of Dennis' lectures, courses, and classic radio programs, and to purchase Dennis Prager's Rational Bibles.